Scholars Onboard Three hundred local students have benefitted from Naples Yacht Club Blue Gavel Scholarships
L
ely High School graduate Fabiola burdensome school debt. “When I talk to my Lopez is the first in her family to go peers, they say they’re struggling financially to college, and she’s doing it with with other bills. It will help so I don’t go Fabiola Lopez the financial support of a Naples Yacht Club into debt to go to college,” says Munoz. “It Blue Gavel Scholarship. Lopez, 19, is attendmeans a lot. It definitely helps out.” ing Florida SouthWestern State (FSW) College and While Jo Monvil is a server at the club, is planning to study exercise science at Florida Gulf Coast University she feels her job goes far beyond bringing Jo Monvil (FGCU). diners their orders. “There are more attributes Being the first in her family to seek higher education involved,” she says. “I literally just like to make “is a big motivation for me,” she says. “A lot of students people happy.” Monvil aspires to be an adolescent psychiatrist— don’t go because money is a factor.” Lopez, who in“someone who changes the world for children.” She dualjured her knees in school sports, ultimately wants to enrolled at FSW in high school so is already focused on her earn a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Succeeding in major in psychology at FGCU. her goals to fulfill her desire to help others also “is Monvil says receiving the scholarship goes far beyond a way for me to give back to Blue Gavel,” she says. dollars. “It takes a load off me from worrying about the fiJimmy Munoz, 21, a club bartender, was nancial aspects of school. But it also puts me in the position thrilled to receive a Blue Gavel Scholarship to purto be the person I aspire to be with a community behind me sue a degree in adolescent psychology at FGCU. He who wants to see me be great,” she says. Jimmy Munoz received his associate from FSW in April 2022. The The Blue Gavel Scholarship Fund is overseen by more than 2019 Marco Island Academy graduate has worked his a dozen Past Commodores. It’s a role to which Commodores way up at the yacht club over the past four and a half years. matriculate when their term is completed. When these club leaders He says the scholarship takes the pressure off worrying about amassing a choose recipients, Monvil says, “they’re saying, ‘You can do great things. 20
NAPLES YACHT CLUB | Waypoints 2022-2023
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